Passage for Par shows our world to be sensual, textured, collaborative

Passage for Par is a dance performance created specially for and presented on Par Beach Cornwall, conceived and directed by choreographer Rosemary Lee for the Cornish International Art Programme GroundWork.

At the turn of the tide 30 women will rhythmically snake their way across the tidal landscape, tracing meandering pathways through the wet sand, their outlines etched against the sea and sky. Following their movements from afar on headland or dune, viewers are invited to take time to discover the ever-changing landscape as the women slowly continue their passage through it.

Rosemary Lee staged ‘Passage for Par’ (2018), a contemporary dance work made for the location. A lip of sand wedged between the fume-wreathed cylinders of a working china clay factory and the ivy dark slops of Gribbin Head, the lizard-green shoreline glitters thanks to its natural quota of quartz and mica.

Here, as the tide turned under a bruleé-rich sunset, Lee’s performers 30 women dressed in dark navy, their arms interlinked — moved across the reptilian pelt with tiny, impeccable gestures that married minimalism to folk dancing. For two hours, the audience, who ranged from art students to picnicking families, remained mesmerised by the collective display of inner and outer unity — not a foot could falter or all would collapse like dominoes. Lees only injunction to viewers was to stay at a distance as the troupe’s fluid calligraphies were best appreciated from afar.

Passage for Par is such a wonderful piece of work. It relates to ‘Do Design. Why beauty is key to everything‘ for several reasons. These are; we are deeply connected to our landscape. The world is sensual and textured. We have in fact between 20 to thirty senses, not five. Time is earthed – embodied in whatever it is we do. Rosemary created beautiful artistry collaboratively, transfixing its audience as a total experience. Experience is all – its how memories are made.

Dance is as much a communal celebration of human biology as it is of our culture. For me, when exploring the human side of innovation, either in the deep process capacities in things like participatory leadership because it is conducted at the human level. Or, at a more general level of embracing and understanding our human-ness is essential to creating better organisations, and societies.

There is Transcendence in the work, where “I” becomes “We”, or as Ali would say “Me,We”.